Paige Spiranac & The Instagram All-Stars Wish You A Merry Christmas,

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Merry Christmas to you, the OutKick readers, who keep coming back day after day

Yes, there will be fresh content on the site today thanks to the workers who keep the lights on while those of us with kids try to create memories on this special day.

Don’t forget that the NFL will have two games: 1 & 4:30 ET.

That will have us busy.

Yes, this post was pre-written. Don’t worry, I didn’t get up at 6 a.m. to write on Christmas morning. I will attempt to sleep in until the kids announce they can no longer wait to see if Santa dumped a few presents.

Have a great day with family. I’ll be back with a fresh edition of Screencaps on Thursday morning.

Email: joekinsey@gmail.com

As promised, here is the legendary 2023 email from Brandon C. describing a Russian defense contractor show he attended years ago and how these events operate – Merry Christmas!

Domestic / allied shows are typically held either in a boondoggle location (Hawaii, Colorado Springs, Charleston SC, Paris/London/Mallorca) or in a completely non-descript CONUS town (hello GVSETS in Detroit! Hello Space and Missile Defense Center conference in Huntsville!).

Almost all attendees are US citizens in the biz or allied military officers. Displays are ITAR / public release materials and the big OEMs (LockMart, Ratheon, General Dynamics, etc) will have big football field sized display areas with vehicles, models, and many, many monitors with hype videos.

However, most companies have a 10 ft x 3 foot booth with a table and a poster and a monitor for software demos (almost every body is selling software now– meh). Booths are manned by either business development sharks, tech experts with poor social skills manning tech demos, or the local office admin who got stuck with making sure enough brochures / swag are out and appointments are kept.

Discussions are rarely “big deal forthcoming” discussions, more feeling out each other for intel, trying to steal each others personnel, or mining the bubba network with active duty officers for any slight insight as to upcoming acquisition plans. For BD schlubs like me, its a lot of prep and paperwork and not a lot of fun.

For example, for the show I went to in Maui this September, I was usually up and out of the hotel by 0600, over to the local office to get binders and meeting notes prepped for the days meetings for myself and our seniors, then to the conference hotel for a quick buffet breakfast and then either to the booth or our corporate meeting room in the hotel complex from 0800 – 1800.

Then it’s after action reports, debrief meetings, and figuring out food. If you have any energy left, you decide whether to hit the corporate rival’s party to get free food and drinks and save your per diem, or blow it on a nice dinner with the one or two co-workers / rivals you like. Else it’s grab the best takeout / pizza in town and head back to your AirBnB condo for that and the beer you bought at the Costco by the Kahalui airport when you landed, so you can maybe text with the wife for a couple minutes while you watch SportsCenter afterhours until you’re ready to head to bed around 8-9pm.

I think I had 3 sit down meals the week I was in Maui this year. The golf course by the conference looked nice. Swag is generally downplayed because of worries about bribery laws, but typically you can score some nice golf balls, reusable shopping bags, fun custom art socks, laptop decals, some USB devices (branded charging / octopus cords), maybe some local food samples (Maui Economic Development Board gets the best macadamia nut cookies; ABQ brings the green chile roasted pecans), and occasionally a really helpful pocket tool (screwdriver set the size of a sharpie, electrical tester, emergency hammer– Army conferences tend to be more Tim The Toolman Taylor focused).

Best swag I’ve gotten before from booth displays was a nice full button up golf shirt with a government agency logo.

Now the foreign shows- this is where the stars shine. For example, I’ll tell you about the Moscow Air Show which I attended twice. Company puts you up in a 5* diplomatic hotel. Breakfast buffet has a harp player, sushi chef, and your choice of carved roast beef / turkey / pork. Transportation is all done in concert with either private security, or US embassy assistance.

You go from your hotel to a military airbase outside Moscow (about a 60 min drive). You’re there for 10-12 hours so be ready (backpack with bottled water, energy bars, and a gatorade). Inside the grounds, every major defense company in the world has large booths with demo models of their coolest shit. GPD jammers from North Korea?

Check.

Mig’s and Sukoi’s on the airstrip with missiles attached? Check. Swedish air defense missile systems?

Check.

Israeli x-ray systems and high power directed energy weapons?

Check.

Want to sit in a Brazilian counter-insurgency aircraft with a helmet on and pretend you’re manning the side guns?

Check.

And all around you are foreign military officers and their flunkies from every country you can think of, in enough varying uniform designs to make you think about the old Naked Gun movie intro. You as the American are the prize catch, so everybody wants to talk to you.

The booths are manned by top15% instagram models from the local Moscow region, and some imports. Think Mikaela Demaiter straddling an air launched cruise missile on display in leather chaps and a cowboy hat. And then beside the display booths are the “chalets”– glamping tents set up with air conditioning, fully stocked bars manned by even more fully stocked instagram models, armed security in numbers that would make a rap mogul blush, and all the slimy dictator’s 3rd cousin by a second marriage hangers on than you can imagine.

Star Wars cantina style. This is where the real deals happen. If it’s a Russian company (and I was there one of the years the Russians were willing to sell things to US people), they break open the vodka and you talk business.

Export laws, export licensing, “transport fees”, “shipping fees”, “administration fees” (all skimming by the seller), dates, shell bank accounts, you name it. And you have to finish the vodka or else it’s an insult. Then if you make the deal, you must celebrate! More vodka, or if you’re a crafty American, you break out the bottle of bourbon you brought– Russkies love Jack Daniels. Full stop.

Then you and your translator figure out a way out of the chalet and rehydrate while poking at an overly burnt kebob you got from the food stands. Yes you want the overly burnt kebob because (A) you’re not really sure its the animal they say it is and (B) if it’s burnt it ain’t living (organisms).

Then rinse, repeat for the rest of the day. All the while, you’re taking notes of the “friends” you pick up along the way and figure out what foreign intel service they’re from– mostly likely Russian SVB, but could be someone else. If you know or remember some of the companies there and they’re friendly, you’ll likely get invited to sit down at their booth for an adult beverage.

A Scottish company where I know the the CEO from his previous gov’t service with HMG invited me to just sit down for about an hour and bullshit while he poured some 20 yr old scotch from his local distillery.

Show’s over and after you picked up your share of high end luggage giveaways (once got a legit $250 North Face messenger bag from a Norwegian armored vehicle company), bottles of premium vodka, a Sukoi aircraft company hockey jersey, usb thumb drives that have more viruses than James Bond’s underwear, and occasionally brochures and technical manuals you’re not quite sure you won’t get arrested for at the airport, you board the bus back to the hotel.

That evening you go out to a high end dinner with company compatriots and amazingly(!) the same guys you saw at the airshow are there two tables over! How weird. $250/person later you stumble back to the hotel, pass the hotel bar which is now populated with every manner of hooker allowed by the hotel concierge, and hit the sack.

You might be woken up at 2-3am by a knock at your door from a scantily clad lady who wants to “practice her english” with you, or the unusual fire alarm that goes off at 4-5am but lasts for 30-60 minutes and when you get back to your hotel room, your luggage seems slightly off from where it was, and a new lamp is on your nightstand.

You leave to go home and after the expected hassling at the airport security, you board your flight happy to get back to the Ol’ USA. The Russian trip I described was the most extreme example of this– other foreign military shows are most of the time a couple highlight displays with some conference hall presentations on new advancements in a weapon system and going out for a pub crawl in a really interesting foreign city.

Overall, I have a rule for military trade shows- if the “door prize” for registration is good, then the conference is going to be good in content as well as booth giveaways.

The best piece of luggage I own came from a mil trade show about 15 years ago and that conference continues to get my money as the best organized and run trade show. Never hungry, alcohol is free, after party scene is varied/creative/walking distance, and work day ends around 4pm local.